


In Tevene, the Words for Math and Magic Are the Same

by vyrenrolar



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Blood Magic (Dragon Age), Blood and Injury, Branding, Friends to Lovers, Homophobia, M/M, Major Character Injury, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-27 21:31:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20767253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyrenrolar/pseuds/vyrenrolar
Summary: A series of snapshots in the early lives of Dorian Pavus and Felix Alexius. Includes canon-typical bullshit from Dorian's dad. Set pre-Inquisition.





	In Tevene, the Words for Math and Magic Are the Same

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spookykingdomstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/gifts).

Dorian Pavus is sixteen and _tired_. He is sitting in a tavern in the elven slums of Minrathous, singing mostly the correct lyrics to a tune that has something to do with poking a sailor’s daughter (ha!). He’s not drunk enough, not yet, but he’s getting there.

It’s half past ass o’clock in the morning, and the bartender has told him he’ll either have to get a room or leave, so he stumbles out the front door, mostly empty bottle of something or other in his hand. He’s still humming the song about the daughter, despite having forgotten most of the words, and he’s trying ever so hard to figure out where the melody goes from here that it’s really not his fault that he trips over the back wheel of some magister’s carriage.

“Some magister” turns out to be Gereon Alexius, and if you were to ask Dorian twenty years later, he would not be able to tell you whether this meeting heralded fortune or catastrophe.

\---

Felix comes home for the midwinter festival, eager to meet his father’s new apprentice. He’s never met anyone who’s failed out of six different circles before, so he’s intrigued to say the least. If he’s going to be honest, though, he’s mostly just happy to have a break from sketching out rune circles for four hours a day. Just because he’s good at math (“Brilliant,” according to his teachers at the Minrathous circle) doesn’t mean he wants to apply it _like that_. He is so very much looking forward to the end of the year long exchange program, at which point he will be named an altus and finally be able to sink back into purely theoretical fields. No more practical applications for him, thank you. Only six more months to go.

He’s so lost in thoughts such as these as he makes his way through the front doors of his father’s estate that he almost misses the bleary-eyed young man walking past him on his way to the kitchens. He does see him, though, and does a double take before his face splits in his first genuine grin in weeks. His father had said the boy was brilliant, belligerent, and a little bit broken, but he hadn’t mentioned that he was _beautiful_.

\---

“I can help with the math if you like!” Felix shouts from the balcony.

Dorian is sitting under a pear tree in the garden, practically pulling his hair out in frustration over his warding textbook. He looks at the young man above him. “Ser Alexius, I would probably kiss you if you did that.”

Felix hops down, bouncing gracefully off a barrier he creates in midair, and laughs. “Promises, promises, Pavus. And what did I tell you about calling me ‘ser?’”

Dorian grins. He quite likes the flirting his mentor’s son has been doing ever since he returned after finishing his studies in Ventus. Nothing would, or could, ever come of it, obviously, but it’s still nice to be noticed. “You know I don’t need help with _all_ the math, of course. It’s just—”

“Warding and barriers, I know. You’re probably better than father at all that destruction magic you bandy about—” (Dorian starts to preen at the praise) “—but Maker forbid someone ask you to keep a candle from going out.”

Dorian pouts. “As far as I’m concerned, magic is supposed to go out, not in. None of this reabsorption nonsense.” This earns another chuckle from Felix, and Dorian’s pout gives way to another smile. He is seventeen, and he is _happy_.

\---  


“I spoke with your father at the Senate meeting,” says Gereon over a lunch of cheese, dates, and palm hearts. “He says he’s arranged a suitable wife, if you’re interested.” Dorian freezes. Felix clenches his fists around his cutlery. Gereon does not notice. “Of course, it would have to wait until your studies have been completed next year, but still,” he takes a sip of his wine, “something to consider.”

“I had hoped,” Dorian ventures after a couple of false starts, “to continue working with you, my lord Magister, after I took my title. I mean, you’re making some phenomenal strides in your research on temporal magics, and I would be honored if I could assist you in that.”

Gereon opens his mouth but is interrupted by Felix. “Surely he doesn’t need to think about marriage just yet. He’s only two years younger than I am, after all, and—”

“Felix, I really don’t care. Dorian, of course you may continue working with me. You should know by now that I find your contributions indispensable. Still, I do think you should speak to your father about this young lady. A long engagement is certainly better than turning down a potential match. You do want your children to come from the best stock, after all.”

Dorian looks at Felix, panicked. He is nineteen years old.

\---  


Felix swears when he gets Dorian alone. The last time he saw his friend, the newly minted altus was stepping (trembling) into his father’s carriage. If Felix had known what Lord Pavus would do to him…

“Let me see, Dorian.”

“You’ve already seen.”

“Watching you be whisked away by Father’s personal healer doesn’t count. Now take off the damn robe.”

Dorian complies, meeker than Felix remembers him. When the younger man has stripped himself of his robe and undershirt, Felix takes his hands. He looks.

Dorian has a deceptively small cut on his left cheekbone. It’s deeper than it looks, and he knows this because there are six stitches right there, right there on Dorian’s face. There is a red scab running the length of his right forearm. He hopes it will scar. The healer is good, but if something like that got infected… There is a complicated sigil over Dorian’s left pectoral. It looks like a burn mark, and with a start he realizes his friend has been branded. He cannot look anymore.

Dorian lets out an “oomph” as Felix pulls him close. He feels Felix kiss the side of his head, his ear, his temple, feels the man’s right arm tight against his waist and his left like a vice grip on the back of his neck.

He thinks Felix deserves some sort of explanation, so he tries. “When I told him I didn’t want, that I couldn’t, he tried,” here he chokes, swallows the sob, “He tried to _change_ me. I don’t know…his math was wrong if he was trying to make me…He was trying to…” Felix is kissing his shoulder now, his neck. It’s not sexual, per se, but it is undeniably _needy_.

“I won’t let him touch you again, Dorian. You’ll stay here, with me and with father, and he _will not touch you again_.” The dam breaks, then, the water falls, and he fists his hands into Felix’s nightshirt. “Stay with me tonight, Dorian. I don’t—we won’t do anything. I just. I need you here. I want you here. Stay, please.” Dorian nods, still crying, and Felix maneuvers the both of them to his bed.

Dorian is twenty, and he is _home_.


End file.
